Rome Revisited II

Well, I suppose the first order of business is to correct a misstatement in yesterday's post. I said that the Janiculum Hill was one of the famous Seven Hills of Rome - wrong! The Seven Hills of Rome are the Quirinal, the Viminal, the Capitoline, the Esquiline, the Palatine, the Caelian, and the Aventine. The Janiculum, on the west side of the Tiber, was outside the Servian Wall. It was incorporated into the city in ancient times, however, when the Aurelian Wall was extended to encompass the hill itself and its mills. It is the second highest hill in contemporary Rome and leaving it outside the city walls was a huge defensive oversight.

Harry was the perfect host for my first visit to Rome. He was familiar with the city, having been there in school for a couple of years. We made our rounds mostly on foot and occasionally on a bus. We basically spent a day wandering about the Vatican and a couple more enjoying Rome itself. The picture above is Michelangelo's dome of the Basilica of St. Peter, with one of the two fountains in Piazza San Pietro, designed by Bernini, in the foreground.

It was All Saints Day and the Piazza was full of people when Pope Paul VI came to his window and blessed the crowd. A water spout from the second Bernini fountain can be seen in the lower half of the picture to the left of the Pope.

I'm not sure who designed the façade St. Peter's, but I liked the clock. When I look at this I always think that if someone wanted a full-time job in Rome, he could keep busy indexing all the Papal coats-of-arms in the city. They're carved in stone, painted, embroidered on flags, and incorporated in mosaics.They're everywhere! They're everywhere!

Among the sights we saw ambling about the Vatican Gardens was this place, up on the hill. I remember Harry telling me it was the Medici Palace or the Villa Medici or something. I spent most of this morning trying to identify it, but finally had to give up. It doesn't appear to be the Villa Medici, which is across the river near Trinita Dei Monte, but I couldn't tie it to any of the Vatican buildings in Google Maps either. Ah, well. . .

We found this Swiss guard with his halberd in the Vatican museums. It's a shame I didn't bother to focus (or get a better angle on his weapon) before I took this picture.

Inside the Vatican Museum, I was taken with this solid gold statue of the Good Shepherd. The figure is about 10 inches tall and on a marble base, the whole thing enclosed in a glass case. Again, if only I had autofocus. . .

I really liked the sculpture all over the city but I especially liked this green marble lion in the Vatican Museum. The lighting's not anything to brag about, but the highlights give a pretty good indication of how detailed this lovely carving really is.

Rome Revisited I

I spent the last couple days in Rome - sort of. As I told you, I passed several days last week scanning slides and I was surprised to find that I had more photographs of places I visited as a hard-drinking sailor than I had remembered. The recent couple of days in Rome were, in fact, spent in reverie as I cleaned up last week's scans and remembered my actual visits to Rome.


This first picture of St. Peter's was taken on the Via della Conciliazione, three or four blocks from the Vatican. I believe it was taken in 1973 on my second visit to Rome because, though it's been cropped out of this picture, the piazza had only a handful of visitors. When I visited the city in 1972 with my friend Harry, it was All Saints Day and the piazza was full of pilgrims waiting for the benediction of Pope Paul VI.


These next two pictures were taken from the roof of the North American College where Harry was in school. The College is located on the Janiculum, one of the famous Seven Hills of Rome. In the picture above, looking northeast over the city, the Castel San Angelo is in the center with Ponte San Angelo crossing the Tiber River in front of it. The castle at various times served as the refuge of the Pope, and is/was connected by tunnels to the Vatican. The large white building a block or so to the right is the Palace of Justice.


This view from the Janiculum, looking east-southeast shows the monument to Victor Emmanuel nearly on the horizon to the right. Victor Emmanuel, the King of Piedmont-Sardinia, became King of a united Italy in 1861. The large, white marble building - often referred to as "the Wedding Cake of Rome" or "the Typewriter" - houses the Museum of Reunification. The king's tomb, however, is in the Pantheon. There are two domes in the foreground; the smaller one, centered, is the Church of the Holy Name of Jesus, and the other, slightly right, is the Basilica of St. Andrew of the Valley.


The church above is Trinita Dei Monti, located at the top of the Spanish Steps and near the Borghese Gardens. It's exterior is often seen in movies because the Spanish Steps seem to be a favorite location of filmmakers.


The last picture in this post looks across the Tiber and Ponte San Angelo (note the Angels on the bridge). The large white building to the left with the bronze chariot is the Palace of Justice. The dome above the second angel is part of the Basilica of Sts. Ambrose and Charles. And, if you look closely, directly above the central arch of the bridge is the pink Trinita Dei Monti - in situ.

My next post will be a few more pictures from Rome; then, who knows?

Restorations

I'll try to keep this post relatively short. I'm taking my retirement seriously, so I don't do a lot of what anyone would call work. I spend a lot of time at my computer - doing some writing, but mostly working with photographs. The way I take pictures, I had to learn something about salvaging them. That came in handy when I started scanning Mom's family photos so I could put them on DVDs for my brothers and sisters. Some of the older pictures were in a pretty poor condition, so I thought I'd see what I could do with them.

This first one, a Wernet family reunion photograph from around 1900, made me begin to think I could do just about anything. It's certainly not true, but I'm proud of it just the same. It's probably a good thing that no one in the photograph is around to complain about how I "fixed" it.




This is the original portrait (left) of William Wernet, my great great grandfather. The picture was in pretty good shape, actually. Restoration consisted of cleaning up a few minor dings and redoing the background. The portrait was taken about the same time as the reunion photograph (above) in which he is the central subject. He died in 1901 at age 82.


Periodically, I surf the 'Net looking for new photographs of my old ship. About 20 years after we parted company I started saving and collecting everything I could find from the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVA-42). I wish I'd started earlier, but I'm certainly glad that the Internet is around. The original above was taken on 17 November 1945 as the world's largest ship (at the time) cruised past Manhattan. She had just been launched at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and is sailing south down the East River.




Among the family photos I was scanning for Mom I found a color slide of an F4U-4 Corsair turning up on the ramp. The slide was old and beaten up, with no markings suggesting the date or location. With no visible squadron or air station markings and a very plain, flat background, I've decided that the picture was probably taken at the overhaul and repair (O&R) facility at the Marine Corps Air Station in Elizabeth City, NC in the mid-1940s. Dad was stationed there after flight training at Pensacola and he and Mom lived down the road in Edenton.

Dad told me about his first flight in a Corsair, there at Elizabeth City. When ordered to do a post-maintenance flight check on the bird, he asked if someone would give him a check-out in the airplane since he'd never flown that type before. The maintenance officer's only response was, "You're a Naval Aviator aren't you?" Following the flight check he was coming in to land and started drifting left. When he decided to go around for another approach he shoved the throttle forward. The torque on a Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp engine with a four bladed, 13 foot prop (2,450 hp) can easily ruin your whole day. In this case, Dad had an opportunity to check out the drainage ditch beside the runway before going around. One of the controllers in the tower remarked to him afterwards, "Captain, you're the first one we ever saw come out of that ditch."

National Sheepdog Trials

One Saturday morning in October 2002, I took Gillian and her friend Krista up to Dawsonville, GA, in the hillcountry north of Atlanta, for the national sheepdog trials. By chance, I had come across an ad for the trials and, remembering a movie or two involving such trials, I thought they might be interesting. The girls both liked dogs and in any case we were all ready for a day's outing.

Overall, it was an interesting excursion, though something less than exciting - at least to me. It had the overall feel of a country fair, with a community of tents with vendors and artisans hawking their wares. The blacksmith and leather workers went about their crafts, describing to the onlookers what they were doing. The crowds wandered the tent city or staked out vantage points on the hillside from whence they could watch the trials from their folding lawn chairs. Most seemed thoroughly interested in the trials. Indeed, it seemed like at least half the spectators had one breed or another of sheepdog with them. Whatever the breed, it was impressive to me that such a concentration of dogs was so very well behaved - only an occasional bark, and no displays of temper.

Visually, the trials themselves left something to be desired since they took place at a distance across the vale. The pictures would have been more impressive had the dogs driven whole herds hither and yon then through the gates. As it was, they fought the stopwatch and drove a trio of sheep through two or three gates located at various positions across the hillside.




On the hill behind us, past the tent city a few other things were going on. Among them, a local breeder had a beautifully matched team of mules in harness for wagon rides.


Through a small stand of trees near the public parking, we found a whole other community of observers - and their dogs - watching parallel trials of dogs working cattle instead of sheep. I should add that some of the dogs appeared to be sheepdogs that had gone on to bigger and better things. I never found out whether behavioral differences in the subjects made sheep easier or harder to handle than cattle, but I can say that an obstinate bovine can be demonstrably more aggressive than any of the sheep we watched.


We ended up cutting the trials a bit short and I took the girls to nearby Amicalola Falls for a hike through the woods at the base of the falls. Not an exciting day, but an unusual one for me and very pleasant.

Siblings I

It's been hot here in central Texas and four days since I've posted anything, but I haven't been dogging it. I've been going through my old color slides, hoping to glean a few new fruits from my past labors. The first problem is that the slides are so small that I may be able to identify them and even assess their composition, but I can't tell till I scan them whether or not they'll be usable. So, I scanned hundreds of slides that showed some potential. Of those, a large percentage turned out to be basically useless because of two things: (1) my Minolta didn't have autofocus and (2) my eyes had started giving out long before I was aware of it. Anyway, much of that job has been completed. Now, because the slides are old and haven't been particularly well taken care of, I have to clean up the scans, removing dust, lint, and hair - and, of course, attempt to address any number of technical issues that I either neglected or botched when I was taking the pictures.

So I have plenty to do, but I thought I'd post these pictures of Siblings - some mine and some not. And while I'm working on the old stuff, we can all be thankful for autofocus, high-resolution images, image stabilization, and indeed, all the benefits of digital photography.


My siblings and I don't often have the opportunity to pose en masse. This was a good attempt in 2004 at our formerly biennial Rendezvous at Crooked Hole Ranch in Utopia, west of San Antonio. Above, 89% of us are entertaining much of the extended Parker family with a rousing rendition of "Chantilly Lace". The Big Bopper was probably turning over in his grave. From left to right are: Mary, Paul, Stephen, Bill, Angela, Karen, Michael, and Ellen.


This picture is of Drew and Lauren on the patio of grandmother's house in Grand Prairie in 2002. I was on my way to Karen's for the Fourth of July and had gone via the Metroplex so I could see as many family and friends as possible on my trip.


This one of Angela and Andrew sitting on the hearth in Ellen's living room. We were gathered in San Antonio in October 2007 to celebrate Grandmother's birthday. An added benefit for me and the other photographers was that several of the kids were prepared to show off their Halloween costumes.


I have a couple of good pictures of Stephen and Ellen together. This one is at Karen's house over Labor Day weekend in 2004. It would have been nicer if I had moved to the side a bit to avoid the glare of the flash. Ah, well.


This one was taken in the breakfast nook at Angela's during a break in the action the night before Thanksgiving 2003. Mary had been baking pies with Lauren while Stephen peeled new potatoes for the morrow.

The Photo Cube

In the spring of 1972 I had given up hope of getting an air traffic control job with the FAA and reenlisted in the Navy. After a brief stay at Naval Station Charleston for classification and re-outfitting, and CCA (Carrier Controlled Approach) school in Glynco, Ga, I found myself cruising the Mediterranean aboard USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVA-42).

About this time, Mary gave me a Lucite photo cube with six snapshots. I don't remember whether it was a bon voyage gift when I left home, or whether I received it in a "care package" once I was aboard ship. In any case, I somehow managed to keep the present intact for close to 36 years. Scratched and somewhat yellowed, I discarded the cube last fall in my preparations to leave Fort Worth for Austin. I scanned the six snaps and stored them properly with others in one of several shoe boxes.

The first shot shows Mary and El Gato on the couch in the den in Tyler. Sometimes referred to as Fat Cat, or simply Kitty, El Gato should have been La Gata all along. (Michael led me down the primrose path on that one. . .) She'll show up later and in other posts. But Mary on the couch reminds me of the many nights we sat up together watching "Movies Till Dawn" while she recuperated from back surgery.


The second picture shows a very svelte Ellen, standing in her bedroom with a glass of iced tea. I didn't see a lot of Ellen during this period. She was already dating Stan and they didn't spend much time at home.


This one shows Mary and Ellen and it's how I often think of them even now. I spent so much time away from my family, having gone away to school when I was 12, that when I think about the family at a given time, I tend to remember snapshots and written descriptions as often as "live" memories. After school it was the Navy, then Lockheed. Maybe that's why I take so many pictures now - they've always been so important to me.


And, since I didn't take these, I don't know all the subjects. Mary left today for Hawaii so I can't ask her who her friend is on the left who can't keep a straight face. (Dee Dee, perhaps?) But Mary in the middle and everyone's friend, Marie, on the right are very adept at feigning sleep.


Marie again and Mary, possibly in the backyard in Tyler, though I'm not at all sure. This picture reminds me that Mary spent a lot of time making her own clothes. Talented, and very industrious, she'd work at her sewing machine while Stephen entertained her.


I guess this one is my favorite of the lot. Mary, with her little brother Stephen on her lap, and El Gato in all her glory on Stephen's lap. El Gato was one of those cats who lulled birds in the neighborhood into a false sense of security. No stalking for her. She'd lie on her back in the tall grass waiting for a bird to fly in low on reconnaissance and knock it out of the sky with one swipe of her paw.

Cousins II

This is the second of at least three "Cousins" posts. Counting Blake, who is actually one generation removed from the bunch shown here, we've got 20 kids who qualify. Of course, I've got cousin pictures from my generation as well. Anyway, there are plenty of cousins so I'm not sure how many posts it will take to make everyone famous.


Now here's a crew of cousins for you! This was taken at the family Rendezvous at Crooked Hole in 2004. Lauren, Angela, Paul, Natalie, Drew, Mary Clare, and Allison are performing for the troops, reading their lyrics from the karaoke monitor. Audio would have been nice, but alas. . .


Lisa and Lauren at one of Angela's holiday feasts in Arlington. This particular one is Thanksgiving, 2004. Lauren's certainly got some whipped cream on her plate, but I can't tell whether the whipped cream came with chocolate, buttermilk, or pumpkin pie - or any of the various fruit pies which also grace her dessert tables.


This was taken at Karen's in late September, 2006, when Paul, Lee, and Lauren were visiting. Just as the party was breaking up it occurred to me that I'd better get some pictures of the clan that include Lauren the Elder. So I guess the picture above would be a "twofer plus one" - the subjects are Lauren the Younger, Lauren the Elder, and Allison.


At Karen's house again over Memorial Day weekend, 2009. Natalie and David paused for a moment in their respective transits of the kitchen to pose for me.


This one was taken down in San Antonio at Ellen's. The occasion was grandmother's birthday in 2007. Paul, Allison, and Drew are posing with Allison's cat. She has two that look exactly the same - at least to me. I'm unable to differentiate between them, but I do know their names now. The feline is either Pom-Pom or Princess.

The Outer Banks

I mentioned in an earlier post that Patrick and I did a whirlwind tour of the Outer Banks in late August 2002. These are my favorite shots from that expedition.


This, of course, is Cape Hatteras light. It is operated by the Coast Guard and the building is maintained as a historical site by the National Park Service. Originally built between 1868 and 1870, it has an interesting history. Between 1999 and 2000, the building was successfully moved half a mile inland because of the threat of erosion.


The shots immediately above and below were shot at two different spots on Hatteras Island, between the lighthouse and the Hatteras to Ocracoke ferry. The one above is the Atlantic view looking southwest; the one below, not much farther down the road, is the Atlantic view looking east. (That surprised me too - the orientation of this part of the island is ENE to WSW.) Kites are even more popular now on the Outer Banks than they were when the Wright brothers were experimenting there between 1900 and 1903.




We continued our trek with a ferry ride to Ocracoke Island where we started thinking about getting something to eat. We had a wonderful meal in the courtyard of a small restaurant in the village of Ocracoke, just off Hwy 12. The view of the lovely harbor above, with the Ocracoke Light at center on the horizon, was only a block or two from the restaurant.


Ocracoke is one of those places, very much like St. Simon's Island (Georgia) and Port Douglas (Queensland), where your thoughts turn unbidden to retirement. Yeah, I could live out the rest of my days right here. The picture above shows part of the marina with the ferry terminal in the background. Pat and I wandered in and out of a few gift shops while we waited for the Cedar Island ferry to return us to the mainland near Morehead City.

A week or so later, after talking to Tony and Donna, I found out that while we were en queue, the ferry disgorged vehicles and passengers from the mainland, among whom were the aforementioned Tony and Donna and two friends from Florida. They were traveling incognito in Big Tony's RV, so we missed them.

Everybody Loves an Airshow

In May 2006, Gillian and I set out to do some shopping and run a few errands. We had been talking about her moving to Fort Worth to continue school and live with me. With that in mind, I thought we'd check out some of the housing opportunities northwest of town where I hoped to relocate. I knew there was an airshow that day at the former Carswell AFB - then Joint Reserve Base, then NAS Carswell - but I had only a nodding acquaintance with the terrain in northwest Fort Worth. To my surprise, we stumbled onto a Loop I-820 on-ramp with a vantage point overlooking the airbase and the airshow in progress. I couldn't pass up the combination of an airshow with no traffic problems so we climbed the curb, parked on the grass, and settled back to watch.

We had a good view of the show, though we were considerably farther from the center of the field was than I was used to.




The surprise came when I realized that a lot goes on during an airshow and not all of it is at mid-field. In the picture above, notice the Blues forming up between the traffic light and the top of the hill. Seconds later, the delta formation, in the two pictures below, came screaming by off my port bow.







This last picture shows our vantage point for the airshow. Note the bird in the left foreground that's not trailing smoke. He's in good position, but he'll never make it to mid-field with the rest of them.

*****

Two years previously, in May 2004, I wrote the following essay.

Everybody Loves an Airshow

I have not gone to an airshow for years, eschewing the traffic, the crowds, and the unrelenting glare of the sunshine without a trace of shade. So the Blue Angels, who had not performed in Atlanta for 18 years, had been off my radar screen for quite awhile when yesterday they surfaced, literally, as I was leaving work headed for the parking lot.

The volume building from the combination roar and bass rumble reached its crescendo at mid-field, diverting me from whatever stray thoughts had occupied my mind enroute to the car. I stopped – stood unmoving with my ears pricked for the slightest hint of what might happen next.

The rising sound tells me something is about to happen, and the volume, amplified by the sounding board buildings backstopping the open area of the parking lot, is not going to let anyone miss it. My attention, now focused directly ahead, is rewarded visually when the northern horizon of Georgia pines and the company wind tunnel spew forth six blue and gold Hornets climbing vertically for the sun in their delta formation then, over the top, they dive for the center of the field – at the last moment splitting up to depart the area on six different compass points.

I watched for a few more minutes on my way to the car as they finished up their arrival area familiarization / practice session for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday shows. That first maneuver got me jazzed, maybe not to the point of joining the crowds for any of the coming shows, but at least to the point of planning the errands on my Friday off so that I might be in the vicinity of Dobbins AFB between 3 and 4 pm.

***

My last task complete, I left Micro-Center about 3:30 with a new USB hub, heading south on Powers Ferry then west on Windy Hill. Up ahead, I barely caught sight of the Diamond bearing down on Dobbins, apparently having decided to sneak in by flying under the carport roof of the local Chevron station. My first thought was that I would probably find a picture of that on the internet in a few days with a complaint by someone of the havoc created by these “reckless Air Force pilots” abusing the trust we taxpayers place in our military. Caught by a stoplight at Hwy 41, I noticed the airshow smoke dissipating in the light winds. Then, "Damn!" I jammed my neck, trying to bury my head between my shoulder blades when the screaming Number Six, turning inbound to the field on his knife edge pass, focused my attention again and reminded me, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

All the way out Windy Hill the car-bound public was treated to brief glimpses of the glossy blue F-18’s jumping from the pinetops on one side of the road to those on the other. When I reached S. Cobb Dive I drew another red light. Dobbins and the show were behind me to the right, though the continual roar of the jets suggested not too far.

It was here that another stray thought intruded. I had read sometime recently that the Latino population of Georgia had increased by 16% in some incredibly short amount of time and, though I certainly haven’t studied the numbers, I assume that the majority of these folks are new arrivals, rather than former Tejanos and Californios. As I sat at the light and looked around at life on the corner of Windy Hill and S. Cobb Drive, I saw Latino pedestrians and drivers and passengers all over, pointing back towards Dobbins and gesticulating like fighter pilots and airshow spectators the world over and thought how incredible it must seem to someone from, say, El Salvador or Honduras to be sitting in traffic or standing on a street corner in America and be treated to such awesome entertainment.

If you can’t get hold of me tomorrow, I’ve probably gone to the airshow.